Will this work?

[termhn]

Yeah... why the hesitation with newegg?

[AlienTwentyFour]

I'm gonna convince my mom to buy these parts. @^

This would be my first time building a PC. I'm gonna need alot of help.
I think I'll need a router, Modem, and a Monitor, which bumps the price to about 600 700ish. Oh well. It'll be a nice family project. Thanks for the help Goku and others!

[Goku]

Ah I see what you mean now. Let me know if you can convince her and then we can go from there.

Do you need to upgrade your current modem/router? Otherwise I wouldn't bother not worth the added cost. On top of that a $700 budget isn't going to cover all that you are looking for either, you can squeeze a monitor in at that budget though. You would need about $800 for everything.

What monitor do you use right now?

As for extra help check out the numerous amounts of video guides on youtube for building PCs. If you need help troubleshooting or anything like that I have no problem helping of course.

[AlienTwentyFour]

Dang it. She doesn't want to build it. Whelp, I guess I'll just swap out the graphics card. Hopefully that will work. Just gotta see if it meets requirements.

[Goku]

Did you tell her you will get more for the money?

[Vancha]

Hell, just explain it'll save you having to buy a better one in a year or so. If nothing else, parents tend to understand the benefit of long-term cash savings.

[Ailos]

You gotta start out small - buy the prebuilt and swap out the card, if that's all that you can do. But... that'll end up being around $150 more than building it from the ground up.

I can understand the hesitation someone may have with building a computer from the ground up. I'd recommend trying to swap out some components on an older PC that you may not care about as much first to get accustomed to how things are positioned and put together if you're wanting a little experience first.

[Fenrys]

Originally Posted by Ailos

I'd recommend trying to swap out some components on an older PC that you may not care about as much first to get accustomed to how things are positioned and put together if you're wanting a little experience first.

This is how I learned my way around the insides of computers. I started out just upgrading parts (video card and RAM), but eventually I had 2 broken computers in my house (through no fault of my own - it was the era of Capacitor Plague).

The broken parts were obvious - a melted coil on one video card that was totally blackened and charred, and a popped capacitor on the other motherboard that was oozing brown goop. I knew the CPU in the busted motherboard was faster, so I swapped parts between the two until I had one working computer.

The next time my motherboard blew a capacitor, I watched a few YouTube videos about soldering, and was then able to repair the board by removing the bad capacitor and replacing it with a new one.

[AlienTwentyFour]

Can someone explain why the nVidia Geforce 520 is bad? What can I replace it with, if I can at all? Here's a link to the comp by the way. I looked up the card on YT and commenters were giving mostly positive feedback on it. Same for those reviews on Walmart. (One person said it was a wimpy card and he swapped it out for a Radeon.)

http://www.walmart.com/ip/CyberPower...tlyViewedItems

[termhn]

Originally Posted by AlienTwentyFour

Can someone explain why the nVidia Geforce 520 is bad? What can I replace it with, if I can at all? Here's a link to the comp by the way. I looked up the card on YT and commenters were giving mostly positive feedback on it. Same for those reviews on Walmart. (One person said it was a wimpy card and he swapped it out for a Radeon.)

http://www.walmart.com/ip/CyberPower...tlyViewedItems

The 520 isn't going to get you very far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's even a significant step up from the Intel integrated graphics. If you're gonna get a card, go for at least a 6650 or the equivalent from nvidia.

[AlienTwentyFour]

Originally Posted by termhn

The 520 isn't going to get you very far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's even a significant step up from the Intel integrated graphics. If you're gonna get a card, go for at least a 6650 or the equivalent from nvidia.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/VisionTek-...tlyViewedItems

Is this a good card? If not, can you point me in the direction of a good one?

[termhn]

The one you chose is pretty dated.

Not sure if they have this at walmart, even if they do you'll have to order online so it's better to go from newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150540

That one's at about the same pricepoint as the one you linked to, and it'll get you pretty good performance in games. For another $40 you can get much better performance from the 6850 or 460.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121419

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130750

[AlienTwentyFour]

! Hopefully that got the graphics card issue sorted out, since that's in my price range! Now I just need to choose whether to get speakers or a headset with it. I've got the router sorted out.

[Fenrys]

Before choosing a video card, you should look at some benchmarks to see how the card performs.

For a quick comparison between 2 or more video cards, I go to this site:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

Using the linked benchmarking software and NewEgg prices:

More points = faster video card. Higher performance per dollar is better.

i3-2100 integrated graphics: 272 points
GT 520: 339 points, $45, performance per dollar = 7.53
HD 4670: 582 points, $60, performance per dollar = 9.7
HD 6670: 1199 points, $70, performance per dollar = 17.13
GTS 450: 1413 points, $90, performance per dollar = 15.17
HD 6750: 1617 points, $80, performance per dollar = 20.21
HD 6850: 2751 points, $140, performance per dollar = 19.65

The video cards that people in this thread are recommending are on a higher level than the video cards that WalMart wants to sell you, both in terms of performance and performance/price ratio. Furthermore, WalMart wants to charge you almost twice as much as what NewEgg will charge for the same part.

A 6750 from NewEgg will be about 3 times faster and $20 cheaper after shipping than a 4670 from WalMart.

[Baneblade]

Wal-Mart is the worst place to buy any type of electronics.